How Lily Figured It Out
by NoMoreJacksPlz
Summary: One-shot. Background story to the S3 episode "How I Met Everyone Else." What prompted Robin's sixteen no's? Robin/Lily friendship.


_Kids, remember when I told you that story about that girl I dated, what's her name…Blah Blah. Yeah, still can't remember her real name. Well, I forgot to tell you a funny side story that goes along with it. I only found out about it years later from your Aunt Lily, but it definitely explains why your Aunt Robin acted the way she did._

_The way your Aunt Lily tells it, it started with a very cryptic phone call from Robin._

"Lily?" Robin's voice came over the line.

Lily rubbed her eyes and squinted at the clock beside the bed. "Robin, it's seven o'clock on a Saturday morning. What are you doing up so early?"

The pause that followed was so lengthy that Lily became worried. "Are you okay? Did something happen?" she pressed anxiously.

"Sort of." Robin's voice was quiet…too quiet.

Lily's heart skipped a beat, and she quickly shook Marshall with her free hand as visions of every possible horrible scenario raced through her mind.

"What? Huh? I'm going to take the trash out, I'm going to take the trash out, just five more minutes," Marshall slurred.

Lily shook him harder, and he opened his eyes and realized where he was. "Oh."

Lily held up a finger. "Robin," she said into the phone, "tell me what happened. You're not hurt, are you?"

Immediately, Marshall's face filled with concern, and he put his ear up to the other side of the phone.

"No, no, I'm not hurt" -- both Lily and Marshall sighed with relief -- "it's just…"

"Yeah?" Lily and Marshall both prompted.

"I had a strange dream last night, and it kinda shook me up."

A big, relieved grin spread across Lily's face. "Aww, honey, do you want to talk about it?"

"Not with Marshall listening in."

"Oh, he's not." Lily shooed Marshall away, but he dodged her hand and tried to keep listening.

"I can hear his mouth breathing."

Marshall guiltily clapped his hands over his mouth as Lily got out of bed and padded to the couch in the living room.

"Okay," she said, "I'm by myself. Now spill."

"Okay. There's kind of a backstory."

Lily raised an eyebrow. "To a dream?"

"Do you want me to tell you or not?"

"Okay, tell, tell."

"Well, ever since I was a teenager, I've had this one recurring dream…Oh, God, this is really embarrassing."

"Robin, it's me. You can tell me anything."

Lily heard Robin take a breath. "Okay, ever since I was a teenager, I've had this recurring dream. I don't know how it started, or why it keeps happening, but every now and then it just does.

"So, I'm at this high society costume ball, and everyone is dressed, like, straight out of _Dangerous Liaisons_."

"With powdered wigs?"

"No powdered wigs."

"Do the men all look like John Malkovich?"

"No. I don't know! You're getting me sidetracked."

"Sorry."

"So everyone is wearing these amazing gowns and suits, and --"

"Ooh, ooh! I know why you had this dream. You watched Madonna do 'Vogue' on the VMAs, and your youthful self embedded it into your subconscious."

"What? This is not about Madonna. Okay, maybe it's a little bit about her, because that was amazing. But seriously, do you want me to tell you or not?"

"Sorry, sorry. Go ahead."

"Well, my dress is this enormous, pink monstrosity, and I'm wearing a corset that pushes my boobs up to chin."

"Ooh, la la."

"And I'm thinking to myself, 'I can't believe I'm wearing this dress. I can't believe I'm wearing this dress.' I mean, it must have had a ten foot radius, and it swishes all over the place."

Lily pursed her lips. "I don't know, Robin, this isn't sounding too extraordinary so far. It just sounds like there's a girlie girl inside you, after all."

"Lily, my next thought is always, 'Where is my handsome prince?'"

Lily nearly choked on laughter. "Oh," she managed to gasp.

_Kids, when Aunt Lily told me this story, I nearly choked on laughter, too. I mean, you know how your Aunt Robin is. But back to the story._

"Yeah, go ahead, laugh all you want," Robin continued. "It gets worse. I go running around the whole ballroom looking for him, practically passing out because my damn corset's killing me, and then I see _him_ across the room. And he sees me."

"Ooh, romantic."

"And he crosses the room and takes my hand, bows, and asks me to dance. And as we're dancing, all I can think is, 'I think he's in love with me! I think he's in love with me!' And when the dance ends, he takes me out on the veranda so we can be alone, and kisses me."

"That's all you do? Kiss?" Lily teased. "How salacious."

"We've never gotten past groping…until last night."

"But in your dream, you like this guy, right?"

"Oh, yeah. He started off as Mark-Paul Gosselaar in his _Saved by the Bell_ days. Then I got edgy and graduated to River Phoenix, which morbidly continued after his death. Then it was George Clooney as Doug Ross, and, I'm ashamed to say, Colin Farrell has starred a few times, too, and usually when he's at his greasiest. Jude Law used to show up sometimes, but I banished him after he boinked the nanny."

"Good move. So…who was it last night?"

There was another long pause.

"Robin," Lily chided.

"It was someone I knew, and I'm really weirded out because we did way more than kiss."

"Define way more." Lily tried to sound nonchalant, but her inner Lily was bouncing off the walls. She'd always loved dirt, but now that she was married, it was like deliciously ill-gotten pirate booty to her.

"Um…we did it? And not in a sweet, princess-y way," Robin blurted out in a rush, sounding distressed. "It was more, um, you know. Primal."

"So it was good?" Lily was riveted.

Robin was silent.

"Oh, it was GOOD," Lily crowed. "Did he rip your dress off?"

"Lily!"

"You left scratch marks all over him, didn't you?"

"Lily!"

"Fine." Lily turned more serious. "Robin, it was just a dream. It wasn't real, it didn't happen, and I think that if it was good for you -- ha ha, good for you -- then you should just take it for what it was and just move on."

"But I'm just so -- it seemed so real. I don't know what I'm going to do the next time I see this person."

"Well, if I know you the way I think I do, you'll bury it down deep, and no one will ever be able to guess."

Lily heard Robin sigh.

"Look, we've all had dreams that seemed real. At least you got some fun, humpy times out of yours. Marshall was inconsolable when he had that one dream about the Wicked Yeti."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

An idea sprang to Lily's mind, and she wondered why she hadn't thought of it sooner. "Robin, do I know this person you had the dream about?"

After a pause that seemed a split second too long to be a normal reaction time, Robin answered, "No. No, you wouldn't know him. It was -- it was an old college boyfriend. Logan. His name was Logan. Logan Bruno."

Lily frowned. "I don't know, that name seems vaguely familiar."

"I don't know," Robin said, sounding more like herself, "I mean, I'm sure there's more than one Logan Bruno in the world. Maybe you ran into his evil doppelganger."

"Maybe." But Lily wasn't entirely convinced.

"Well, thanks for listening," Robin said. "I feel a lot better now that that's off my chest. Whew. Can't believe I made it into as big of a thing as I did. See you at MacLaren's tonight?"

"Of course. Ted's bringing his new girlfriend, remember?"

"Oh, right, what's-her-name."

_The rest of the day proceeded like normal, and the early morning conversation with Robin slipped to the back of Lily's mind. That is, until we were all at MacLaren's with -- God, what was her name? Guess I'll just keep using Blah Blah for the purposes of the story. Barney was in the middle of proving his Hot/Crazy Scale worked, and Blah Blah was doing her darnedest to fit in. Marshall and Lily had just told their tooth-rottingly adorable story of how they had met, when Blah Blah said:_

"So, we know how Marshall and Lily met. Robin, how did you and Barney meet?"

_It was Robin's response that jogged Aunt Lily's memory._

Robin's nose scrunched up in a way that Lily had never seen before, and Robin laughed in a weird, stilted way that Lily had never heard before. "No. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Barney and I are not together, no. No."

_And when Robin squirmed helplessly and didn't have anything to say to Barney's response --_

"Really. Sixteen no's. Really."

_-- Aunt Lily just knew._

_She waited until Blah Blah and I had left, and your Uncle Barney was chatting up some girls in the corner, and your Uncle Marshall had run to the little boys' room._

"It was Barney!" Lily accused Robin triumphantly.

Robin nearly spit out the sip of beer she'd taken. "What?"

"Your dream was about Barney!" Lily hissed, her eyes dancing with victorious glee.

"It was nah -- _what_? Hey, you don't know that," Robin said, defending herself.

"You don't say _no_ sixteen times without a reason," Lily countered.

"I already told you who it was about," Robin said, sitting up straighter. "It was about my college boyfriend, Logan Bruno. And we have an alumni thing coming up in a few weeks, so I'm really concerned it's going to be awkward and --"

"Oh, you mean Logan Bruno, boyfriend of Mary Anne Spier of the Baby-Sitters Club?" Lily interrupted. "I was not aware that you once dated a fictitious eighth grader!"

_Oh, right. Kids, I almost forgot to tell you. Earlier in the day, Lily had been surfing on eBay._

"Hey, honey, look!" Lily called to Marshall. "Someone's selling their entire Baby-Sitters Club collection! My mom made a mint on my old books."

She looked closer at one of the titles: _Logan Likes Mary Anne_.

"Hey," she said slowly, something clicking in her brain.

_Yeah, that was kind of an important detail. Anyhow:_

"He was a good boyfriend!" Robin protested.

"Come on, Robin," Lily chided.

"He was!"

Lily just gave her a look.

For a moment, Robin looked like she was going to put up a defense that would rival Custer's Last Stand. Then she caved.

"So what if it was?" she said in a subdued voice as she shredded a drink napkin. "I mean, it's Barney. I would never…I mean, he's Ted's close friend, and we -- he's not -- I wouldn't…."

"I know," Lily said understandingly. She reached out and gave Robin a friendly pat on the hand. "It was just a dream. So you screwed like rabbits in that dream. You don't have to defend yourself. Sometimes dreams just happen. It doesn't mean that's what your subconscious actually wants."

Robin pushed the napkin shreds to the middle of the table. "Yeah, you're right. I mean, can you even imagine? Me and Barney? What would that even be about?"

"Yeah," Lily agreed with an amused giggle, "that would be pretty funny. Although I can't think of any other girls he's taken to the cigar bar who actually liked it."

She looked down and swirled her whiskey in her glass before taking a long drink. Which was probably why she missed Robin's sharp, quiet catch of breath at her words.

Marshall bounded back to the table and slid into the booth next to Lily. "Sorry it took so long, but Barney tricked me into wingman-ing him with that redhead over there." He gestured with his head to the corner booth, where Barney had his arm around a perky-looking girl. "'Don't believe his lies!' I should tattoo that onto my arm."

"With a ballpoint pen," Robin added.

Lily raised her glass. "To keeping important things in mind at all times."

"Here, here," Robin and Marshall chorused, and they all clinked their bottles and glasses together.

_That night, Lily swore Marshall to secrecy about Robin's dream, and to his credit, he kept his word. Robin was able to put the incident behind her, and for a long time, she was convinced that that would forever be the extent of anything between her and Barney. Life has a funny way of turning all those expectations on their head, though. The things we think are certain often end up being the things that are the most vulnerable. But that's getting ahead of the story._


End file.
